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G
GVspike
Participating Frequently
December 26, 2019
Question

Classic v9.1 on MacBook Pro: to WindowServer or not to WindowServer?

  • December 26, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 1018 views

Hi all,

While troubleshooting a high CPU issue on my Late 2013 MBP 15" Retina 2.3 Quad  Core i7 w/ 16GB RAM, Activity Monitor showed a process called "WindowServer" consuming over 500% of CPU power and fans were blowing fast. Lightroom was not performing any tasks, just running idle. 

I took 2 actions:

1. Clean up old apps like Bitdefender and removed them thoroughly (daemons, agents, plists) and fix an "orphan files" issue found in the board SSD system drive by Disk Utility by running first aid in recovery mode - hereafter called OldSystem

2. Create a second newly formatted system drive on a USB3 SSD drive, a maiden Mojave 10.14.6 install with no 3rd party apps except Lightroom Classic, as a reference system to see if an uncluttered system would perform correctly, hereafter called NewSystem.

Lightroom Classic v9.1 (current latest version at the time of writing) performs OK on the NewSystem. But upon checking activity monitor for WindowServer CPU usage, I found no such process running. Absolutely no process called "WindowServer" listed in Activity Monitor.  Isn't that most peculiar?

Lightroom Classic v9.1 on the OldSystem performs significantly better after the cleanup. Even without extensive testing I can tell CPU usage appears to be normal. 

I am very curious about this WindowServer discovery. I hope anyone can provide some illumination. 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

L
Lumigraphics
Legend
December 27, 2019

Its not peculiar. WindowServer is a low-level process and you may have just had some unrelated problems on your previous system.

G
GVspikeAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 27, 2019

Hi lumigraphics,

thank you for your reply. Yet I feel I haven't explained the issue clearly enough. Because otherwise my guess is you would in fact find it peculiar. I'll try again:

System A:

Runs quietly after boot. Right after starting LR classic 9.1 the machine exhibits loud fan noise, beach ball and high CPU usage of a process called WindowServer. This suggests LR triggers the WindowServer process high CPU load and also that WindowServer is an essential process LR needs to run. 

System A: Is my current workhorse, lots of apps installed. Dates from Yosemite or El Capitan era, then updated to every macOS update, now on Mojave. 

 

System B

runs quietly after boot and LR 9.1 runs fine. But no process called WindowServer listed in Activity Monitor. how can this be? The WindowServer process appeared to be necessary on System A to run LR. Why isn't it called on System B ?

System B: Newly installed Mojave on the same machine (same hardware) as System A. LR Classic v9.1 is the only installed 3rd party app, along with Carbon Copy Cloner. 

 

L
Lumigraphics
Legend
December 30, 2019

WindowServer is a system process. Its running. Are you showing all processes in Activity Monitor?

ManiacJoe
ManiacJoe
Inspiring
December 27, 2019

As a Windows guy, I may not be that much help about the internal workings of the Mac OS, but this article might shed some light on what and why.

https://www.howtogeek.com/312755/what-is-the-process-windowserver-and-why-is-it-running-on-my-mac/

 

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